Credibility The Missing Ingredient In Hawkins' Campaign

November 6, 1986|By Harry Straight and Anne Groer of The Sentinel Staff

If you are searching for a political post-mortem for U.S. Sen. Paula Hawkins, listen again to her parting words in her Election Day concession speech.

Gracious and calm, she pledged to support the Democratic victor, Gov. Bob Graham, and recited a list of Republican accomplishments since President Reagan's election six years ago.

It was Reagan's standard stump speech -- full of talk about 10 million more people employed, lower interest rates, respect for America overseas and renewed arms talks with the Soviets prompted by Star Wars.

''If she had just said that during her campaign,'' said attorney Russ Crawford, chairman of the Republican Executive Committee in Orange County, Hawkins' home county.

''As a member of the majority party she could have legitimately said that she had a part in that. If she had emphasized that, the people would have had a much more positive image of her,'' Crawford said Wednesday. ''Instead, she talked about issues that in the grander scheme of things just weren't that important.''

Crawford is one of Hawkins' most loyal supporters, but even he knew what lost the race -- and so do others.

For example, a woman who works for a Florida Republican congressman was asked to recruit 25 friends to vote for Hawkins, ''because that's what you are supposed to do as a party loyalist.''

She could get only three.

''I had a lot of trouble because even traditional homemakers thought her agenda was not large enough,'' the woman said Wednesday. ''I think they appreciated what she had done with missing children -- putting kids' pictures on milk cartons -- but she didn't really capture their loyalty.''

Hawkins' early campaign ads touted her as ''Unique. Irreplaceable.''

''Weird'' is the word Graham pollster Bill Hamilton preferred.

''There was something about her, a feeling that there just wasn't the sort of leadership, strength, consistency, direction, resolve for the broad issues that people sort of expect from a U.S. senator,'' Hamilton said Wednesday.

''Credibility? Consistency? There's another word -- I've been searching for it for 16 months -- and the only one I can come up with is 'weird,' and even that's off by five degrees.''

At the start of the campaign, Hamilton's polls told him Hawkins had an image ''of generally a populist, but with a fair amount of shoot-from-the-hip stuff, not too trustworthy, taking credit'' for things other people did.

Early in her Senate career, she crossed the name of Sen. Lawton Chiles, D-Fla., from an amendemnt he had just written, inserted her own and had her press office issue a news release headlined, ''Senate Passes Hawkins Amendment.''

She said she made a difference -- and she was right.

In 1981 she was the prime mover in winning passage of the Missing Children's Act, which put the names of missing children into the FBI's national crime information computer.

She earned a reputation as a tireless fighter for such issues as the rights of homemakers, children and drug abuse.

However, she kept stepping into what Graham called ''a fantasy world.''

She once said crime was so bad in Dade County that there were 133 machine-gun deaths in one year. Actually, there were six.

On nationwide television, she said there was an epidemic among Miami 2- year-olds of ''gonorrhea of the mouth.'' There were only two such cases.

In a taped interview, Hawkins said both her father and mother died the same year. They died six years apart.

From the start of their battle last year, Graham consistently ran 15 to 20 percentage points ahead of Hawkins in polls.

With $2 million in TV ads last winter, however, she managed to increase her favorable ratings and get rid of her negatives, Hamilton said.

She checked into a hospital for back and neck surgery in the spring, and by the summer she had closed the gap to 6 to 8 percentage points.

It was the closest she ever got -- despite assurances from her pollster, Dick Morris, that the race was dead even during the last month.

Then came the battle of the negative ads. Graham went on the offensive, attacking her votes on Coast Guard funding and drug education. The ads shocked many Graham supporters, and while they were literally true, they distorted Hawkins' positions.

''People said we were crazy to attack her on drugs, but we pointed out her inconsistency. Drugs were the hot issue, so why not use that so people pay attention?'' Hamilton said.

''I mean, they were really down and dirty. They made us constantly go back and readdress misstated facts, and it was very distracting and very expensive.''

Then Hawkins ran an ad claiming she visited China twice to stop the smuggling of Quaaludes into the United States. Graham used newspaper reports refuting the ad to hammer home his claim that she lacked credibility.